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I decided not to post any images of the Print Fair until after the show as I wanted to encourage people to come down and see it for themselves! Now a week has past since the end of the exhibition so here is a summary of my experience this year!

It was exciting once again to see the show up and running , the standard of work is always amazing but this year in particular demonstrated a wonderful range of techniques and styles. We had a few new members including Peter Chadwick http://www.norwichprintfair.co.uk/Peter_Chadwick whose work was greatly admired and Richard Horne http://www.elhorno.co.uk/ who did really well with his graphic prints! It’s always a thrill to meet new artists and discuss each other’s work and throughout the show both artists and visitors enjoyed a really sociable experience.

The two Saturdays were our open portfolio days, where we had the opportunity to show even more work and converse with the public as they meandered through the exhibition. I particularly enjoyed chatting to some of the young GCSE and A Level students who were sent down to research for projects! I took my copper plates with me so that I could demonstrate the different stages of making a print and found that people were generally really interested to know how the processes work.

We had a demonstration day on Sunday the 16th. Not all of the artists took part (as it would have taken more than one day!) but those who did were thrilled to have 350 or so people pass through to watch the goings on. I decided to take part this year and set up a table with examples of my proofs and different plates and tools. I had a good cluster of people asking me about how the plates were produced and the equipment used to work on the image. It therefore helped that Laurie Rudling http://www.norwichprintfair.co.uk/Laurie_Rudling had a small press next to me and was demonstrating the inking up of a plate. To a print maker the whole printing process is why we do what we do. We are just as passionate about the end result as we are to show how it was made in the first place and the response from the public is always great because they have a better understanding of the images they are looking at.

Overall the exhibition had a really positive public response and it was once again showed evidence of it’s support through sales of artwork, cards and raffle tickets!

A big big thank you to all who took part and who came to see the Norwich Print Fair 2012! It has been much appreciated!